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Make The Call, Jason!

Jason Licht needs to remember that scene in “The Godfather.” When Michael Corleone arrives in Las Vegas, trying to set up a meeting with casino owner Moe Greene.

First, Michael clears the room of the waiters and the dancers. “Give him a call,” Michael then says to Fredo, who knows Al Pacino is in Sin City strictly on business.

Well, this is business, too. The business of winning.

There may be a rare opportunity to acquire a cornerback who has earned eight Pro Bowl berths in an 8-year career, a 3-time All-Pro who has never missed a game and has a long and distinguished history with Bruce Arians.

If Patrick Peterson is indeed available, the Bucs need to be interested. At the very least, this potential opportunity merits a phone call from Licht to one of his best friends in the business, Arizona GM Steve Keim.

Peterson is not a happy camper in the desert. He’s bent out of shape and nobody in Arizona seems to know why.

I don’t care why.

“Find A Way”

Eight-time Pro Bowler Patrick Peterson

He wants out — and Tampa Bay needs to show him the money and directions to One Buc Place.

With a new head coach, the Cardinals don’t want to part company with their best defensive player. That’s understood, so Licht needs to make Keim an offer he can’t refuse.

Peterson turns 29 in July and he’s slated to make a combined $23 million in the next two seasons. For each of the past four years, he has cracked the Top 20 in voting for the NFL’s Top 100 players.

Do you see anyone on the current Buc roster worthy of that kind of recognition?

Antonio Brown, arguably the best receiver in the league, just got dispatched to Oakland for picks in the third and fifth rounds. I’m offering at least a 2 and a 4 for perhaps the premier corner in the NFL.

This is not Darrelle Revis coming off knee surgery. This is a future Hall of Famer, healthy and in his prime.

What about Peterson’s salary? Find a way.

Peterson entered the league in 2011, two years before Arians put his stamp on the Cardinals. He saw the quarterback whisperer breathe new life into a dead franchise.

“You saw what he did in Arizona,” says Peterson. “He turned around things very quickly and only in five years was the winningest coach in franchise history. We should’ve went to the playoffs three of his five seasons. We won 10 games that first year (2013) and still didn’t get in. Coach knows how to win games, Coach knows how to put players in the best position possible to be successful.”

You’d have to think Peterson is playing mind games with Todd Bowles on a daily basis. Bowles is looking for someone to anchor a young secondary and unlike Brent Grimes, Peterson enjoys the challenge of shutting down elite receivers — no matter where Julio Jones or Michael Thomas might line up.

“My biggest strength is being able to play well with my back to the quarterback,” says Peterson. “I love to play up at the line of scrimmage, right in the wide receiver’s grill. To do that, I need to play really well with my back facing the quarterback. I need to be able to read the receiver’s body language and eyes to tell me what’s going on in the backfield — if the ball is coming, if the QB is scrambling, if he checks down to a back.”

A proven lock-down corner would give Bowles a lot of flexibility and confidence to install an aggressive scheme. And while there would be other potential suitors for Peterson’s services, the Bucs need to give this their best shot.

Ira Kaufman began covering the NFL as a New York Giants beat writer in 1979. He arrived on the Buccaneers beat in 1985, and the corporate leash finally was removed from his neck when he joined JoeBucsFan.com in July 2016. The award-winning Ira Kaufman Podcast fires twice per week, and Ira’s columns appear thrice weekly, except when Ira is on special assignment. Tampa Bay’s only Hall of Fame voter also is a popular guest on various national radio and on local TV. Don’t miss him weekly on TAMPA TWO with Derrick Brooks, a production of The Identity Tampa Bay and JoeBucsFan.

I would have loved the idea of this if we drafted differently but there is just no way man. No way you give up 2 MORE draft picks and $$ after you’ve just spent a 1st, 4 2nds, and and 2 3rds on the secondary the last few years… with 4 of those being CBs… We’d be at 7 premium picks spent on corners basically in just a few years at that point. I mean my god.

It’d mean a bunch of highly drafted dudes sitting and not developing. Just a huge waste of resources with no vision to building a team if they do this.

If they drafted mostly all front 7 disruptors, with 1/2 of the ammo spent on secondary, then yeah this makes a ton of sense. Not with the current team make up.

Because he is an all pro and been to the pro bowl and never missed a game he DEFINITELY is NOT Jason Gumps type of player. Gump needs to look and feel like a hero finding the zero players and give them gobs and gobs of Glazer loot so if it ever works out (which it never does) he can say”look at me! I’m not as big of a dumb arse as you think!”

Don’t you fools know that Gump has fvkin DESTROYED this franchise and immediate 5 year future???

This franchise is rotten in its foundation.

REMEMBER ONE THING FROM KOBE!

“YOU CAN NOT REBUILD SLOWLY FROM THE BOTTOM”

You can add and rebuild when your 15th best/talented team to the next level BUT

When you are the 25th ranked/talented team …you just cant add pieces or 2 rookies per year and overspend where you have no money!

When you are a bottom dweller 5-11 team. You are what your record says you are

ONLY KOBE IS STATING THIS AND IT WILL SURELY COME TRUE

ONLY with a total purge and absolutely complete reconstruction from the top will we ever change this franchise around…and Gump he is locking up overpaying bums to long time contracts WHEN WE ARE NOT READY

DO YOU SHEEP KNOW ABOUT WINDOWS? TIMING? WE ARE FLAWED AND ROTTEN TO THE CORE

We have to unload every big contract…EVERY FVKIN ONE…We need draft picks and that one talented draft evaluator!

Ira … Since Peterson makes about $12 mil per year for the next 2 years, any chance the Cardinals might swap Peterson for GMC & say one of our CBs drafted last year? The pay’s roughly the same, and it looks to me like the Cards have a VERY mediocre cast of DTs: Brown, Gunter, Valentine & Peters, plus Turner who can play inside. Against the run they were worse than us: they came in #32 in rushing yardage allowed (a whopping 2,479 yards) AND #32 in rushing TDs allowed (a whopping 25).

That could be a WIN-WIN … Bucs can really use an experienced CB in our Secondary, and the Cards can really use a DT who can put some pressure upfront. Plus Arizona & Oklahoma are real close, so GMC could go home on the weekends. Oh wait …

.We are in cap hell!!!!!!!!!!……I generally agree with Ira, but not on this one……. I would do something crazy but in some other position, not in CB, I agree Peterson is an extraordinary player, but if we do something crazy should be on the DL or OL, not in CB position……… If JPP and GMC are gone, and looks like, we need money to cover those positions, and 13 mm probably will not be enough…..we aren´t going anywhere with the players left………So not a CB…….please……

Don’t disagree with Ira on anything very much, but this is not doable. They’ve invested heavily in DBs the past 2 years and have to stick with that plan and let it play out. Help is needed more for the front 7 and O-Line. Also, to pay this guy puts the Bucs in a continued cap Hell….

Gotta be in the decent camp on this one. The D-line is a bigger need with O-line and RB right behind. We have a lot of draft capital already invested at DB and we are up against the salary cap. We are not one player away, certainly not one DB away.

JPPs gone, Mccoy on the way out, yes IRA all we need is a 11.5 million dollar defensive back. You do not create cap space by adding another high priced player. If they could recoup all of JPPs 14.9 salary and Mccoys 13 then maybe but I would not give up a #1 because we will need that for a new quarterback.

Like some other posters have pointed out, there has been way too much draft capital thrown at DB’s the last three years to throw more capital and salary at an almost 30 year old defensive back.
This move would have been made before thus draft if it were going to happen.

No thanks….don’t we ever learn ?…no reflection on his ability and career….but this is a team building from within…maybe the Cap Hell is the best thing happening to the Bucs right now…in a strange Buc Life way….

Kobe … Looks like you’ve gone over to the Dark Side too. Tell Realist & tmax & the others in the Chicken Little Coup hello for us.

This IS as REBUILDING YEAR. It’s Year 1 actually, regardless of what BA & Joe say. To do away with ALL of your experienced veterans is akin to committing suicide as an NFL team. It’d be like putting a college team on the field against mature teams like the Patriots, Rams, Chiefs, Saints, etc. Our youngsters NEED a certain number of quality experienced veterans to learn from & to show the way ON THE FIELD. Coaches can only do so much. Bucs have some decent starters, just not enough of them. We NEED some better LEADERS, and someone like Patrick Peterson has demonstrated that he can lead. And no, we can’t afford Peterson without gaining GMC’s salary in exchange (via a trade preferably). But yes, we do NEED other holes filled, but a FA starting-caliber CB was a priority BEFORE the draft … nothing’s changed. We’ve gained a lot of rookies, which is great, but they lack experienced leadership.

That’s a crack pipe dream on several levels. One, the Bucs cannot afford him. Two, it would require too much draft capital for a player at or near the end of his prime. And three, why on God’s green earth would he want to finish out his career here. Odds are he winds up in K.C. or another team knocking on a Super Bowl.

This years draft told Kobe we still don’t have a plan and going nowhere

We should have cut Brate, Dsmith, GMC…etc

im fine with Devin White because we drafted not only a Lb but a leader

but the rest of the draft was garbage and with no direction. should have picked up 2 oline and rb/dline

we have young corners already!!! needed a veteran corner to SOLIDIFY the back

Why do we have to be the only team to draft 3 out of 4 db/saftey rookies to start. Where is the past history of success in this method? Most succesful teams and GMs have 1 drafted rookie corner and to learn and mess with the veteran players. This method not only makes sense but has been used successfully for decades

we had 2 past years and drafted 6 defensive backs and…

we are talking about trading for a corner that will be expensive, cost us draft picks and lock us for many years of deciding play

we have a boatload of sheet heads in the secondary right now…somethings gotta give…unload a few to arizona…i can see evans, hargreavances and a draft pick or 2…throw in mccoy just to piss off cleveland…lol

werald mctoy the arizona cardinal …omg lol…he can keep the red hair there as well !…he looks good in red…i hear bruce is ordering him an xxxl kangol so he can wear it and tuck in all those red dreads correctly…bruce says “werald ya gotta come correct when sporting the kangol my sonn”

The time to sign Peterson was one or two years ago,IMO. The question I have is did they draft some really good players with Bowles involved. I was looking forward to seeing if they could contribute early rather than later in their career.
Signing Peterson will set their development back and most probably add to our cap woes. We have had very little success with bridge players so far. A trade where our salary cap changes little would be the only feasible way to get this done.
But a part of me wants to see if BA and company can turn this team around with the young players they drafted.

Kobe? Kobe Faker? Is that you it is me Lionel Joeseph from the African Educationan conference. Yeah Mon it Is I Kobe Faker from the Joebucsfan Pavilion. I remember the pavilion we had great fun there. Oh the memories!

Dont think Licht needs to remember any movie lines for a business deal. I also think he has already made at least one call on the matter, probably a few. The cappeth is a tricky beast. Need to find someone to get McShafted for McCoy and get out of JPPs deal. These coaches aren’t Klueless staff. Surprise cuts will be made and plenty more additions. Plenty of time left to evaluate and add. If ya aint a grown up breathing ball youll be elsewhere. Refreshing.

I’m still confused by this article…it appears you believe that the Bucs missed on all their draft picks and now they should hire a CB that can do the job. If Peterson was the answer to all our problems why didn’t we make this “can’t” miss trade before the draft. Then select an edge rusher and o-line. It appears that you think the coaches and GM should be fired (it’s clear that many feel that way). I believe going after an older high price CB is clearly 180 degrees from where this club is heading. You are telling them they total messed up and they need to fix it now.

A couple of cocktails and cold beers between buddies Stevie Kiem and Licht Weight ( not when it comes to drinking, however ) could seal this deal. Just as Parcells brought “his guys” to new teams he coached…Peterson clearly is a Bucco Bruce guy and it would infuse both talent and chemistry into the moribund franchise. Brate ( for the rookie WB ) and a pick outta do it. Or Brate, McCoy and multiple picks 😉